WARNING: Do NOT Listen To These Skinwalker Stories Alone
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What happens during the first night in the wilderness?
I make my living sitting very still in places most people never see after dark. I shoot catalogs and magazine spreads, owls slotted between saguaros, bobcats ghosting a wash, ringtails sneaking into old mine adits. It's unglamorous if you don't like waiting. I do like waiting. I like charts and windchecks and setting up a scene the way a bowhunter sets a stand. You read the ground, you look for sign, you stack quiet advantages, you try to become background, and then animals step back into their routines like you were never there. This happened in late October, on Bureau of Land Management terrain along the east side of Kofa National Wildlife Refuge, a long spit of country between Quartzsite and Yuma.
I'd pulled a small assignment to chase desert predators with night vision, coyotes in particular, because the publication wanted images of how they move when heat is down and traffic thins. The plan was three nights out. I slept in the Jeep with the seats down and worked out of a pop-up ground blind I set 20 yards off a two-track that died in a dry arroyo. It was a good pinch point. mouse tracks scribbled in the sand quail dust baths scat with mesquite beans and hair i bait nothing i sit where prey and water make predators logical the first afternoon i drove the miles of washboard until the cell bars fell away and the chatter of the interstate faded I chose a slightly raised bench for camp to keep flash floods out of the picture, tuned my satellite messenger to send a check-in once at dusk and once at dawn, and started walking sign.
Coyotes were around. You can tell from the way a line of pads moves straight through gravel, from the scat on a rock and from the night music if you get lucky. I found something else too. A big dog print with a long center pad. Wide splay. Almost too clean. It wasn't unusual enough to bother me. Out here you get feral dogs, ranch dogs, hybrids. The desert makes opportunists. I set the blind in the shadow of a Palo Verde and broke a small circle of stones for my stove. Gear went where it always goes, tripod legs splayed and balanced low, gimbal head leveled, Sony camera body with the 200-600mm zoom lens mounted and a 1.4x teleconverter attached, backup camera body with a 70-200mm lens in case something came inside my circle.
I strapped a pair of passive infrared floodlights to the Palo Verde and another steel post, set to 850 nanometers so the glow is invisible to human eyes and about as subtle as you can be without going full thermal. I tested autofocus against a foam block at 80 yards. I checked the zipper door of the blind twice. I locked the jeep. I always lock the jeep. You do it until it's muscle memory. People aren't the only clever ones. As twilight went purple over the castle dome mountains, a single coyote barked way out in the flats. A dry yip answered north. It felt like the right choice of spot. I boiled water, ate a pouch meal that tasted like warm salt, and went to work. Coyotes are confident. They watch you break your silhouette and they clock everything.
You'll see it in their head angle and in the way their edges never fully relax. That first night, around 10, one drifted into the infrared, a big male by the carriage and the neck. He moved like he'd inherited the place.
What unusual animal behavior is observed during the night?
Tail level, feet stepping in line to save energy, nose pulling air with intent. I watched him lope parallel to the wash. I took a few frames when he cut across the pinch point. He heard my shudder even with the silent mode and stopped. Head up, ears like points. A small drop of saliva stretched from his lip and snapped when he closed his mouth. He looked past the blind at the jeep and then back to where I was. It wasn't the usual look of, I hear something. It was inventory. Where's the human? Where's the box that smells like him? Where's the heat? Where's the hard shelter? He circled once, never crossing my wind, and faded. I wrote it off as a dominant male patrolling his groove and felt mildly proud of where I'd chosen to sit.
Around midnight I heard soft steps in the gravel around the jeep.
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Chapters
8 chapters
1
What happens during the first night in the wilderness?
0:15–3:53
2
What unusual animal behavior is observed during the night?
3:53–6:25
3
How does the protagonist prepare for potential threats?
6:25–9:03
4
What strange tracks are discovered in the morning?
9:03–11:18
5
What is the significance of the deer hair found in the woods?
11:18–14:37
6
How does the encounter with the runner unfold?
14:37–18:26
7
What actions are taken after the strange encounters?
18:26–20:55
8
What reflections does the narrator have after the experience?
20:55–1:02:31
Speakers
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